The Hacker Mindset

It’s critical for IT security teams to stay vigilant not only when it comes to major security issues, but also to minor challenges and always following security best practices.

Putting yourself in the shoes of a hacker is beneficial. Sometimes you have to poke holes to point out flaws. Get together with your team and discuss system vulnerabilities, potential threats against your organization’s data, etc.

People having different perspectives is a huge edge because it may lead to identification of exploitable security issues and addressing these issues will eventually improve the state of security of your company.

As IT security threats evolve, chief information security officers and their teams must be prepared for everything from zero-day exploits, deepfakes, supply chain threats, malware, etc.

By ensuring visibility across your infrastructure, encouraging employee training, and supporting bug bounty programs, your organization will improve its security posture and be better prepared to overcome security obstacles.

The No.1 Security Ally Is Your Team

Recent breaches have shown us that the level of sophistication and damage caused by malicious actors doesn’t slow down. Unfortunately, hackers who breached casino giants MGM, Caesars few months ago also hit other international organizations over the past few years and allegedly collected more than $300 million in ransom so far.

So, if hackers are staying up to date on the latest threats and risks, it goes without saying that we should as well. Creating a “security champions” program across the company is a great way to instill security. Therefore, you should have a team member from your legal department, sales, finance, etc., who can connect with your security team and be a liaison for security.

A widely known saying is you need to create a “human firewall”.  One way to help this is to implement Security Awareness Training to help your team understand proper passwords, types of phishing attacks, etc.

Bug Bounty Contests

The easiest way to access ethical hacking is to organize bug bounty contests. Executives should reward good behavior.

Encouraging employees to attend hackathons, even if it is only to observe or learn at first, is very important. It’s one step in the right direction for cybersecurity education.

The increased need for internal cybersecurity education and support for bug bounty programs will continue growing in order to keep up with rising threats.

For hands-on IT security learning, you should arrange company-wide competitions and games that encourage employees to figure out how cybercrime could potentially harm and ways to protect themselves and the overall organization against such threats.

Simulations are very effective for preparing your staff against a real breach. Teamwork is a valuable resource in developing and implementing a viable cybersecurity solution.

Many companies combine bug bounty programs with third-party penetration testing. Every organization should have a bug bounty program, but if you’re not ready yet, just make sure you have a way for users to report security issues to you.

In addition, there are automation tools that can perform Penetration Tests, a platform that combines the knowledge, methodology, processes, and toolsets of a hacker.  To put it in simple terms, the automated application will try to hack your network to test your security.

Increase Visibility

With 93% of malware hiding behind encrypted traffic and only 22% of organizations claiming that can prevent malicious access to their service accounts, it’s no wonder that there were more ransomware attacks in the first half of 2023 than in all of 2022. Once a cybercriminal has made their way into the network, you must act within a limited time interval. Clear visibility over network traffic will help stop the cybercriminal from gaining access to company data.

Without full visibility, there will undoubtedly be a way in for hackers without your team spotting them because they typically infiltrate an organization’s network via hidden or sneaky entry points. This way, cyber criminals continue to hide within your network and grant themselves access to the organization’s sensitive information.

Implementing a Security Operations Center along with Endpoint Detection and Response and/or Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools can increase visibility into your organization.

If IT security professionals can better understand “the hacker’s approach” and their “modus operandi”, they will be able to protect their own systems, employees, and customer data.